World giants flex their muscles to exploit American weakness

By Peter Hartcher

For the last quarter century, the world enjoyed a luxurious moment, rare in modern history, where all the great powers seemed content with the scope of their territories.

The collapse of the Soviet Union marked the end of the “imperial urge,” according to the British diplomat Robert Cooper, who was also Tony Blair’s foreign policy guru.

Illustration: John Shakespeare.

But today we see that the imperial urge was not dead, just dormant. Two of the great powers are extending their territorial reach by force, and the rest of the world is scrambling to find a way to stop them.

Those powers are Russia and China. Both are nuclear-armed. Both are protected from action by the United Nations Security Council because they are veto-wielding permanent members. Both are revanchists, seeking the restoration of a former glory.

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They are not allies but they describe themselves as being in “strategic partnership”. This week we see the US, with its allies in Europe and Asia, trying to manage the threats on both continents.

Russia under Vladimir Putin is seeking to rebuild its Soviet empire. He has said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century”. In recent weeks he has taken political and military control of Crimea and is now pressing deeper into Ukraine.

China is seeking to recover territory and dominance it exercised over much of Asia in ancient times.

In 2009 it lodged with the UN a new claim to 90 per cent of the South China Sea.

The claim is marked by the much-contested “nine-dash line” on the map. It’s in the shape of a giant scoop, dipping southwards from China to collect territories also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.

China’s President, Xi Jinping, has made the restoration of greatness a signature of his rule.

Within two weeks of taking power, he led his cabinet, the standing committee of the politbureau, on a visit to the national museum in Beijing. They inspected the exhibit on China’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of Europe and Japan.

Xi turned to reporters and said the “greatest Chinese dream” was the “great revival of the Chinese nation”. He personally led the policy group that developed the nine-dash line and has pursued it with increasing assertiveness as president.

China also presses east in a newly energised claim to islands administered by Japan, the Senakau (in Japanese) or Diaoyu (in Chinese). Japan, deeply worried, has started putting new surveillance gear and troops on a nearby island.

Moscow and Beijing are not pursuing old-style territorial expansion, sending columns of troops and tanks and fleets in mass formation. They’re smarter and more subtle.

Russia is using unidentified agents and special forces in unmarked uniforms to sow fear and chaos in Ukraine. It is advancing slowly, activating local supporters and establishing a pretext for further action as it tests responses.

China is incrementally expanding the scope of its maritime and aviation patrols, butting up against the ships and defences of its neighbours and even those of the US. It does not open fire, but neither does it back off.

And over time it escalates the intensity of its patrols and the reach of its claims. It presses ever outwards as it deploys new and bigger ships and planes every month.

Russia and China, in other words, are avoiding an explosive confrontation, denying their rivals a “CNN moment”, flexing muscle inexorably but not throwing direct punches.

In response, the US has led its NATO allies in imposing financial sanctions on Russia. This week it led the Group of Seven major industrial democracies in extending the sanctions and US President Barack Obama promised to keep raising the “cost” to Russia of its aggression.

The sanctions do impose a cost. Capital flees, Russian interest rates rise and threat of recession looms. Is Putin deterred? The creeping takeover of Ukraine is proceeding apace.

The US is seeking to reassure its European allies; it has sent troops into Poland and promises more for the Baltic states. NATO allies are now reviewing their defence budgets.

In Asia this week, Obama is visiting four of China’s neighbours to assure and encourage them in standing up to China.

In Tokyo, Obama stood next to his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, to clearly reaffirm that a Chinese attack on the Japanese-controlled islands would also be considered an attack on the US.

Was Beijing intimidated? Two days later, it sent two of its coast guard vessels well beyond the maritime boundary claimed by Japan, a deliberate show of insouciance.

Obama went on to Malaysia, the first visit by a US president in half a century, and on Monday signed a defence agreement with the Philippines to allow US forces more scope to operate there.

So far, none of these responses show the least sign of deterring further expansion by Moscow or Beijing.

In declaring the end of the “imperial urge,” Cooper proclaimed that history was evolving. In a famous 2002 essay, he announced the arrival of “the postmodern state”.

The most advanced nations solved problems by intensifying interdependence. They shucked off traditional tools of the nation state. The nations of western Europe pooled their sovereignty to create the European Union.

Japan renounced the traditional right to war and maintained only a minimal capacity for self-defence.

Cooper said these post-modern states were characterised by “the rejection of force for resolving disputes and the consequent codification of self-enforced rules of behaviour”.

How instructive that the EU and Japan are today in the front rank of countries reconsidering their defences against ambitious neighbours. The great powers are redrawing national boundaries by force; Cooper needs to write a sequel.